Henryk Lewandowski on the inauguration of the Belzec camp memorial

This photo was taken during the inaugaration of the Belzec camp memorial in 2004. I am pointing at the name of my maternal grandfather, Nuta Jungman. My grandpa was born in 1886 or 1887, and in 1942 they took him to Belzec. He used to dress the traditional Jewish way, had a little beard, wore a gabardine and that sort of a Jewish cap. After the war I've never been a member of any Jewish organization until my retirement. I didn't want to be a fictitious member, and I didn't have the time. Only after I'd retired did I join the Children of the Holocaust; I didn't even know such an association existed, I came to join the Jewish veterans organization that was being formed. I try to be as active as I can. After becoming a member of the Children of the Holocaust, I've organized two trips to Israel, in 1994 and 1998. I speak Yiddish a little, sometimes I meet with a couple of others and we tell jokes, or we do exactly what my parents used to before the war: there's Professor Poznanska who speaks Yiddish very well, and when we wanted to discuss something just between us, we used Yiddish and no-one could understand a word. As for other languages, I'm not really good at learning them. For example, I swotted up English many times, to no particular effect. I don't speak German well, but I can communicate. I was in Germany this year, I had a few meetings with young Germans, and I asked for an interpreter, just in case. Sometimes I needed him, sometimes not. I speak Russian rather well, and I've caught on some Ukrainian while on a post in Ukraine.